Bio: Alexander J. Foley, Schuylkill County, PA

Contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Jay Zane
jrzane@bigfoot.com


USGENWEB NOTICE:Printing this file by non-commercial individuals
                and libraries is encouraged, as long as all notices
                and submitter information is included. Any other use,
                including copying files to other sites requires
                permission from the submitters PRIOR to uploading to
                any other sites. We encourage links to the state and
                county table of contents.
_________________________________________________________________
				ALEXANDER J. FOLEY

	The flags at half-mast januaary 14, 1910, at the Culebra Naval Station,
San Juan, Puerto Rico, were in honor of a Schuylkill County son, Marine 
Sergeant Alexander J. Foley, who had dropped dead of a heart attack at 
the age of 44.

	Heckersville-born Alexander J. Foley had not only won an enviable 
collection of honors and medals since his first "hih" in the Marines 
dating back to 1888 when he was a young man of 22, but he was also the 
holder of the Congressional Medal of Honor.

	He was the son of Edward and Catherine McDonald Foley who moved to Lost 
Creek when he was a child.  As a boy, he signed up for a five-year 
enlistment in the Marine Corps in Philadelphia.  He was mustered out as 
a private in 1893, elisting for another five years the very next day.  
He served in the Spanish-American War in Cuba and teh Phillipines, 
enlisting for still another five years and becoming a corporal and 
sergeant.

	Then Alexander J. Foley won Marine immortality during the Boxer 
Rebellion in northern China in 1900 when fanatical members of a Chinese 
nationalist society sought to drive "foreign devils" out of China and 
wipe out western world influences.

	Missionaries and their families had been attacked and murdered, and 200 
men, women, and children of the various foreign legations were under 
seige in the British Legation at Peking for two months.

	The international settlement at Tientsin was under seige by the Boxers, 
and western nations dispatched a fighting force of 5,000 Ameericans, 
British, French, Russian, and Japanese soldiers to lift the Tientsin
seige.

	The Boxers had dug in well and the action at Tientsin was no minor 
clash in June, 1900.

	Two companies of the Ninth U.S. Infantry were under merciless fire on 
june 21 when Sergeant Foley and three companions came across 
badly-wounded Major James Regan on the battlefield.  With total 
disregard for their own safety, the four improvised a litter and marched 
three miles under small arms fire to a temporary field hospital where 
Major Regan was given medical treatment.

	Wrote Regan, then a lieutenant colonel, later:  "It was with the 
greatest of difficulty and persistence in their noble work that they got 
me off the field.  They placed me on an improvised litter made of two 
flannel shirts and two rifles.  I was a heavy man and with the greatest 
of care over the roughesst kind of ground, under fire, they carried me 
to the Marine Hospital in the city, a distance of about three 
miles....Such men are worthy of all the distinction the Government can 
confer upon them."

	The citation for meritorious conduct and Congressional Medal of Honor 
were formally presented to Foley before the garrison at Cavite, 
Phillipine Islands, on May 11, 1902.

	Alexandeer J. Foley had been a Marine for 22 years -half of his life - 
when he suffered the fatal heart attack at Culebra Naval Station.   
Because it was not practical at that time to ship his body home, he was buried 
with full honors in Puerto Rico.